Collegiate student visits inauguration

Joshua Leutz of West Ashley had an "inaugural ball, dinner and stuff" on his schedule the night of Jan. 20, he said by telephone from a hotel room in Washington.

For Leutz, 13, the highlight of the day had passed hours earlier when he stood on the National Mall with about a million other people and watched Barack Obama take the oath of office.

"I haven't been to an inauguration before. It's probably the biggest crowd I've ever been in," Leutz said.

Not even performances by Bono and Bruce Springsteen two nights earlier topped watching the swearing-in. The "We Are One" concert was OK, but the inauguration was "really cool," Leutz said.

"I kind of thought of the 'I Have a Dream' speech. It sounded like that to me. It made me think that this is a big movement and it's probably going to change how people are going to live and think now in the United States," Leutz said.

Leutz was invited to Washington because of his participation with LeadAmerica, an organization that offers academic, career-focused and international leadership programs for students in grades six through 12. The headmaster of Charleston Collegiate School, where Leutz is in seventh grade, told him about the organization. Leutz spent 10 days in Washington in June 2008 at the National Junior Leadership Conference.

Around November, he got an e-mail inviting him to the 2009 Presidential Youth Leadership Conference to be held for five days in Washington.

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm going to the inauguration. Wow,'" he said.

The students got up around 2:30 a.m. on inauguration day and were on the National Mall around three hours later.

"You should have seen it after the inauguration. Oh my gosh," Leutz said. "That was just chaos. There were so many people and they even closed the Metro."

The conference came to an end with an evening inaugural ball for the LeadAmerica students.

Leutz, whose favorite subjects are math and English, would like to attend an Ivy League college, though he's not sure what he would like to study. Right now, he's focused on the great experience he had in Washington.

"I'm glad to be a part of history," he said.

Reach Nita Birmingham at 937-5433 or nbirmingham@postandcourier.com.